After reading Ani’s Raw Food Dessert ‘uncook book’ a few weeks ago, I wanted to get her first recipe book as well. Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen, is a beautifully presented, 255 pages, colourful collection of easy recipes that require little effort. There are fabulous recipes for drinks that will give you radient skin, breakfast ideas, fresh salands and easy peasy dressings, soupes and sauces, side dishes, cheezes and pates, amazing mains, delicious desserts and even a chapter on raw food for dogs!
What I love about this book is hardly any of the recipes require a dehydrator so anyone can make these things without needing to buy new equipment.
With recipes like: Cherry Malt Mylk, Banana Raisin oatmeal, crepe kreme stack, Spanish Scramble, Spring Herb rainbow salad, Garlic Walnut soup, mushroom rissotto with white truffle-infused olive oil, Pecan chai pie on cashew crust and many many more, you will want plenty of excuses to get people around to test out these recipes. I love having over a girlfriend for lunch to test out a new dessert recipe I am trying.
I also enjoy reading Ani’s personal green tips on the environment, toxins to avoid, skincare, shopping and exercise tips. The book has bright and colourful photographs and is presented in such an inviting way you really feel like a friend is talking to you throughout the recipes and chapters, inspiring you to give them a try.
Ani is also a trained executive chef and you can really tell as their are some very lovely touches to the recipes, still simple yet giving them an exotic twist.
I particularly loved the Black Sesame Sunflower bread recipe. This is the first recipe I have made where it actually tastes like proper bread. So easy to make literally
Black Sesame Sunflower Bread with Sun Burger and Salad
takes about 5 minutes! I was thinking the other day, how happy I am when I am making raw food. I had read before that becoming raw connects you with the earth more, and as hippy dippy as that first sounded, I now know what they mean.
When you are making food that comes from a natural and healthy source which is actually responsible for making the planet better from organic farming methods you feel so good knowing that you are not contributing to the horrible effects of mass produced ‘commerical’ food. And then you have the even better feeling of knowing you are only putting amazing nutrients and enzymes back into your body and those that are around you, eating the food that you prepare.
We are all lost these days in what we think is a ‘healthy diet’. To me, Raw is the only way to go because when you look at the chemistry of it, it just makes perfect sense. Raw food is live, nutrient packed food, and the more we eat, the healthier we become.
Ani’s All American Apple Pie – So delicious! Served here with banana ice cream
Its worth checking this book out too for the chapter on Ani’s dog Kango, who she rescued years ago from a kennel. Kanga was very sick had lost chunks of fur and was so thin she was skin and bone.
Over the first two months of Ani having her, she slowly began to introduce raw food into her diet. She made her nut mylks (not milks!) and pates and mixed this in with her usual canned food so that that taste wouldn’t be shocking to Kanga. Soon she started putting more raw food in and less conventional food. Within a few months Kanga was a 100% vegan and was the healthiest she could possibly be.
Judging by the photos in the book she is right, Kanga is a ’super’ dog and Ani is always being commented on how amazing Kanga looks. There are even a couple of raw dog food recipes in the back as well for your dog to try out if you feel you would like to incoporate some raw food into their diet too.
Ani Phyo’s website is great, she updates it regularly with new recipes and you can keep track of what she is doing. I have heard a rumour that she has just released chocolate making kits!
Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen is available from www.amazon.com and also www.amazon.co.uk
